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xxii
FOREWORD
sooner or later to arrive at perfection. They have, as the earlier Buddhists would say, entered into the stream (srotas) and are destined for final realization.
The section on gunasthāna is admirably written and contains a mass of valuable information from the source books on the way in which the process of spiritual regeneration sets in and continues. Interesting details are given which remind one of the mysteries involved (i) in the awakening of kundalini or in the act of conversion which transforms a mundane into a supra-mundane citta moving inwards to Nirvana or (ii) in the anugraha-sakti which not only purges but also divinizes the soul. The process is analogous, from one point of view, to the process of the first reclaiming of a prthagjana into an ārya, and then of leading an ārya already in the stream, through gradual eradication of all the fetters that bind him down to the wheel of life, to a state of moral and spiritual freedom. From another point of view it is comparable to the process which generates a bodhicitta and leads it up from stage to stage till it realizes itself as a full grown Buddha. The process begins with right vision (samyag-darśana) in the soul as soon as the coating of relevant karmic matter is removed, at least for a short while, by means of the various karaņas'. Right vision follows on the removal of this veil. Once it is acquired it never leaves until perfection is completed. There may be lapses, but these are at most temporary and bound to disappear.
This shows that the elimination of karman or avidyā is followed by the rise of jñāna. Coats of matter must be removed if right vision is to emerge. Patañjali's conception of the relation between kriyayoga and samādhiyoga is relevant here. Kriyāyoga helps to attenuate the karma-seeds but not to destroy them. They are destroyed only by prasamkhyāna which follows from samadhi, thus showing that jñāna alone either rising from samadhi or inspired from above effects the destruction of avidyā and the granthibheda. The belief expressed in the couplet:
bhidyate hrdayagranthis chidyante sarvasarśayāḥ
kşiyante câ'sya karmāņi tasmin dyste parāvarea is on the contrary to the effect that the vision comes first, either as a result of an act of Grace from above or of an act of intense self-effort from within and is followed by granthibheda, samsayaccheda and karmakşaya, and not vice versa.
In the Tantras however we have a synthesis of the two apparently conflicting positions. The counterpart of karmic matter obscuring t soul is, as has been already observed, anava-mala or atomic coating 1 Vide infra, p. 271.
2 MuUp, II. 2. 8.
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